Price transparency efforts are heating up, and Walgreens is eager to boost its brand as a go-to source for convenient, cost-conscious care. Walgreens said the platform’s providers will offer “sensible alternatives to more costly emergency room visits.”

Despite growing calls for transparency around healthcare prices, few websites offer information that can help consumers make informed choices about their care. In an analysis by Duke University researchers on availability of price information for four nonemergency medical procedures, just 21.9% of 1,346 price transparency sites were relevant to the particular intervention, 28.4% linked to individual providers or clinics, 7.4% offered quality information but not prices, 27.6% offered generic information and 17.4% provided unrelated information.

Only 17% of the sites included geographically relevant price estimates. In addition, most websites didn’t clarify whether the price quote referred to total cost or the consumer’s out-of-pocket cost.

Maryland is one of a handful of states trying to increase transparency around healthcare pricing. Last fall, the Maryland Health Care Commission launched a statewide campaign called Wear the Cost to let consumers compare costs of four common procedures: hip replacement, knee replacement, hysterectomy and vaginal delivery. The program was recently expanded to include price and quality data based on commercial insurer data from 2015 and 2016.

‘No teeth’: experts concerned resale price caps won’t be effective At least 53 per cent like the idea of capping prices at 25 per cent above face value, something local ticket broker Kingsley Bailey says is unrealistic, even though he supports the idea. “There’s no teeth in that because there’s an unlevel playing field. They […]

Reacting to news of the boycott, the cinema chain says that it offers “a number of discounted opportunities” and that customers can contact them if they want help in “understanding how to access these deals”. This response has further angered a group that has recently been set up to highlight the disparity in cost that […]

Despite small gains in the late hours of the weekend, the cryptocurrency market suffered heavy losses last week. Prices appear to have found stability this morning, but most of the market has made a loss on the day. Bitcoin increased 0.63 percent to trade for $6,384.25, while Ethereum fell 2.67 percent to trade at $317.69. […]

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